


Who tells your story

by SainaTsukino



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka is the goddess of everything and we are all in love with her, BAMF Uhura, Crossover, F/F, I mean like they crash on a planet and then shit happens, Minor Character Death, Mission Fic, NaNoWriMo 2016, Not Betaed, and also the movie, bamf ahsoka, but probably like pre-spirk and mc coy flirting left right and center etc, but yeah um, canon compliant until after star trek beyong, canon compliant until after the ahsoka novel and then not canon compliant with rebels, discussion about the destruction of vulcan and the destruction of the jedi order, kirk having a thing about vulcans, probably ill throw a shit load of side pairings in this ill tell you when they happen, s pretty much every star trek fic ever lets be honest, so you know a lot of death all around, that, this is a happy fic though i swear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-02 04:21:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8651044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SainaTsukino/pseuds/SainaTsukino
Summary: Ahsoka and Rex return to Mortis years after the fall of the Jedi order, pulled by a strange calling in the Force. Six years later, the Enterprise crew receive a distress signal from a shuttle that went missing soon after the destruction of vulcan, believed to have had vulcan children on board.What do these two events have in common? When Uhura, Kirk and the rest of the rescue team land on Broguel II, they find more than they bargained for. The rescue mission goes wrong, they are stranded and separated, but when they come across two veterans of the clone wars, there is hope where before there was none.





	1. Prologue - The Memento, in hyperspace.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this is a nanowrimo project mostly written in a hurry on the corner of a table, with no beta. But at least i have a plot and I know how all of the story goes! I know i don't have the best track record in finishing stories, especially long ones, but if I ever find myself out of time or inspiration, I promise that I'll post the notes and the full planned synopsis so at least you can all know how this ends.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy this! Weirdest pairing ever lol but it works
> 
> EDIT 17 Feb 2017: so I just edited chapter1 because let's be honest, it was a mess. I didn't change anything about the story but I did make sure to remove the weird typos and tried to make my sentences flow better.
> 
> I'm probably gonna edit all the current chapters before adding the new one, so keep an eye out for that.

There was a pull in her belly. The feeling was an unpleasant one, like a thousand tiny hooks had bitten into her flesh and insisted that she follow them to their source. The more that she fought it, the harder they pulled.

It wasn’t new. The urge to return to Mortis had been with her ever since they’d left it. Or rather, been made to leave it. She knew how much it was a bad idea, and she’d been good at ignoring it, until now.  
Ahsoka remembered very little from the not-planet, but she’d read the reports. Even the one that Master Kenobi had written secretly for the council, the one Skyguy hadn’t known about. (And, after reading it, Ahsoka hadn’t had the heart to tell him about it either.) She knew the horrors that had almost happened on Mortis.

In retrospect, a lot of it made more sense, now. For a long time afterwards, wracked with guilt, she had wondered what could possibly have pushed Anakin so close to the dark side. Was it her own fall to the Son’s manipulations? Was it her death? His mysterious vision? Master Kenobi’s report to the council had been dripping with his own guilt, but that wasn’t much to go on. Her grandmaster always felt responsible for things that were hardly his fault.

The fall of the Republic had put that question to rest, at least. Ahsoka knew in her heart that if Anakin had seen it coming, he would have absolutely done everything to prevent it, even if it meant falling. Would that have helped any? Sometimes, in the dead of night, she wondered. Would Anakin have been enough to stop the Empire from rising if the Father hadn’t erased his memories? Perhaps if he’d had the sense to tell Master Kenobi about his vision, instead of trying to dash off and fix it himself…

But there was no use wondering about it, not when she couldn’t change any of it.

Still, the urge to return to Mortis and get answers was not new. It was, however, the first time that it was strong enough to make her physically ill.

Ahsoka rested her head on the wall of the fresher and tried to stop shivering. The low vibration of the ship, practically non-existent on newer models but a given on old trashcans like the Memento, lulled her into a sort of meditation for a few minutes. The drunkard that she’d won the ship from had evidently spent a lot of time on his knees in that same fresher, for there was a soft carpet under her knees, probably the only nice thing in that whole ship. Shame about the color though.

A hand slipped under her lekku and rubbed soothingly at the back of her neck. She pushed back into Rex’s reassuring touch.

 “We’re almost there,” he said quietly. “It won’t be long now.”

She closed her eyes and blocked out her immediate surroundings. Nearby, shining bright like a supernova in the patterns of the Force, she could feel it. Mortis was getting closer with each second spent in hyperspace. Rex was right. It wouldn’t be long, and once they got there she knew that the planet would be there, properly accessible for the first time in years. Why it would show up now and not all the times before that Ahsoka had tried to reach it, she didn’t know.

But the Force needed her there. She felt it clearly. The same way that it had needed her on Mandalore, and Thabeska, and Raada, and all the places where she’d been able to do some good.

And the rebellion was properly getting along now, too. Fulcrum, while still instrumental, wasn’t inexpendable anymore. She could afford to leave for a few months to answer the call of the Force. It felt too important to ignore. Bail Organa had been put-out, but he’d known too many Jedi to question her. In the end, he’d agreed to let her pass on the title of Fulcrum to Draven’s intelligence division. She might not always like their methods, but she trusted in their judgement.

Ahsoka wiped the sweat off her forehead and stood up shakily. “Thanks,” she told Rex. He handed her a wet towel and she ran it gratefully over her face.

“For being here, I mean,” she added. “You didn’t have to.”

She hadn’t even asked, but somehow Rex had known about her plan to leave, and she’d found him waiting next to her shuttle at dawn. It was reassuring, to still have a friend who was willing to stand at her back.

He shrugged. “I wanted to. Maybe I miss weird Jedi shit.”

She rinsed her mouth at the sink and gave him a shaky smile. “Not a Jedi anymore, Rex.”

“Weird Force shit, then.”

She was about to reply when the computer beeped once, and then she felt the ship drop out of hyperspace. She spared him another shaky smile and then made her way to the tiny cockpit. She was reaching for the back of the pilot’s chair when suddenly, the entire ship lurched to the side.

She felt the Force bubble up seconds before alarms started blaring. In the viewport, the view of Mortis was suddenly replaced by a swirling vortex of blue lights, like a thunderstorm in space.

“What’s going on?” she yowled, fingers digging into the back of the seat. She tried to reach the control panel but the Force gathered around her, screaming. Sudden light flooded her senses and her whole body went hot. It felt like being plunged into the heart of a star.

She had the sudden, gut-churning sensation of the universe folding in on itself and her knees hit the cold steel floor with a dull noise.

“We’re being pulled by something!” screamed Rex, his fingers flying over the controls. “It’s not a tractor beam, or if it is, our instruments are completely broken!”

“What?” she asked, electricity running along her montrals and the taste of ozone exploding at the back of her tongue. The metal of the ship screamed against the outside pressure and she groaned along with it.

“We’re going really kriffing fast,” answered Rex, slapping a gauge and still working the controls even though it did nothing. “Faster than hyperspace, and the rest of my readings are useless!”

Ahsoka’s eyes focused on a display whose needle was spinning around and around until it was a blur of motion. She squeezed her eyes shut and fought the urge to throw up again.

Then it all stopped at once, like someone had flipped a switch. The loss of the Force pressing in on her was so sudden that she almost collapsed from the whiplash. She didn’t have the time to pull herself together. The alarms started screaming again, and Rex swore.

Ahsoka looked up. The Force vortex had been replaced by a planet, one that was green and brown and evidently not Mortis. Also it was much, much too close, filling up the screens ominously. She swore too and dove for the controls.

Then they were crashing, their ship a long stripe of fire over an empty jungle world.

 


	2. USS Entreprise, in orbit over Broguel II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uhura, Kirk and the away team beam down to the surface of Broguel II, where two baby vulcans supposedly crashed their shuttle six years ago. However, no mission of the Enterprise crew can go smoothly, and the second they get there, shit hits the fan.
> 
> edited 20 feb 2017. Mostly just syntax and I added a few sentences here or there.

“Spock, if you keep moving I’m going to sedate you and tie you to that damn bed,” called Doctor McCoy from across the room.

Spock ignored him and sat up in the bed anyway. Uhura rolled her eyes. She grabbed a pillow on the next bed over and slipped it behind him, so that he could lean back.

“You do not understand, doctor. My presence on that mission is primordial.”

“You not dying is also pretty primordial,” replied McCoy, already readying an hypospray. Uhura had no doubt that whatever was in it could probably keep Spock down for the duration of their mission on Broguel II if necessary. “We don’t want to be out of a first officer. Jim would never let me hear the end of it.”

Spock gave him a flat look, the equivalent of a Vulcan eyeroll. “My wound is hardly severe enough to cause my death, doctor.”

“It could, if it gets infected again”, he growled. “A goddamned papercut can kill a man in the right conditions.  And if you’re down there instead of up here, who’s to say that I’ll get to you in time, huh? Think about that before getting stabbed next time, will you? Now, lay down.”

A small wrinkle appeared between Spock’s eyebrows. It was barely there, but for those who knew him, it was a sure sign that he was getting pissed. She leant forward and laid a hand on his upper arm.

“I know how important this is for you,” she said, “but McCoy is right. You need to recover. Besides, we’ll be in contact with you every step of the way.”

Spock’s mouth thinned, but when he turned to look at her he had a certain softness to his gaze. He had always looked at her like that, ever since their first meeting. She suspected that he probably always would, despite their break up. _Respect and affection_ , he had once called it. Once freely given, Vulcans were not in the habit of taking such things back.

Uhura felt her heart squeeze, and wondered for the hundredth time if she had taken the right decision.

Then Kirk broke the moment by striding boldly into the room.

“Is Spock being difficult again?”, he asked McCoy, sparing a glance in their direction. Uhura rolled her eyes at him, as if to say ‘what do you think?’

“Captain –” was the cranky reply, but Kirk spoke right over whatever complain Spock would have made. “You can’t go on the mission Commander, and you know it. It’s bordering the line of too personal. Starfleet protocol.”

Uhura and McCoy looked at him in surprise. Everyone present knew that ‘too personnal’ wasn’t actually a problem for Kirk; heck normally he would have jumped through hoops to let Spock join any mission he’d expressed emotion for. But it shut Spock right up, which Uhura suspected had been his plan all along.

Given this new angle to consider, the Vulcan stiffened as he realised that he was, indeed, already emotionally compromised by a mission that hadn’t even begun. Uhura saw in his expression that he was formulating and then dismissing several objections, but then he seemed to settle. Something like weary acceptance passed over his face before he resumed his usual poker face.

“Very well, captain.” He stretched to his side table, making McCoy bristle, and grabbed his padd. “I have prepared a brief for the away team.”

Kirk had the decency not to smirk, although it was a near thing. Once again, he’d been able to flawlessly manipulate Spock into doing just what he wanted.

 

\--

 

Once they’d gathered all of the away team around Spock’s biobed, Kirk cleared his throat. He pulled his shoulders back and visibly settled into the role of Captain.

“Alright everyone, let’s start with a quick recap. Six years ago, as you all know, the Vulcans recalled all of their citizens from everywhere in the federation to their new colony.”

That was a delicate way to put it. After the destruction of their planets, the Vulcans had gathered on the moon of Rexus and practically shut themselves off from the rest of the Federation until they could figure out how to go on. It’d given everyone a good scare, but fortunately the surviving elders, led by the other Spock, had had the good sense not to close themselves off from outside influence completely. Protecting their cultural heritage was one thing; becoming shut ins was another. They were only just now starting to achieve a normal level of involvement in the federation’s affairs.

Uhura saw several of the security guards exchange uncomfortable looks, and she tensed. At least Kirk had had the foresight of only bringing in people who had been with them for that battle and all of the bullshit that had followed. No one looked at Spock, who didn’t let anything show in his expression anyway. He was far too professional for that.

“In the bustle,” continued Kirk, “They lost track of a small shuttle, and the last transmission received indicated that it’d crashed, but they couldn’t get a fix on where. Well, a few weeks ago, they were surprised to receive a distress signal apparently from that same shuttle. We’re being sent in to find the wreckage and assess the situation. The planet Broguel II has only been visited once, and deemed semi-hostile, hence why you four are here.” He gestured to the security officers who nodded with gravity.

“We’re hoping to find survivors. This might turn into a rescue mission, so Doctor McCoy and Lieutenant Uhura are coming along too. Commander,” he nodded to Spock, “tell us more about the shuttle’s passengers.”

“It had a crew of three humans, whose files are in the mission notes, who were escorting two Vulcan children to the colony. The Vulcans, Syrik and Susak, were aged nine and three respectively at the moment of the crash.  If they are still alive, I urge you to approach them with e _xtreme caution.”_

Uhura could see the security officers start at that. Kirk and McCoy, however, were thoughtfully nodding along.

“We are talking about children who have lost their planet along with all of their known family.” He paused briefly to swallow, before continuing in an even tone. “Vulcans are a telepathic specie, who form mental links, called bounds, with those close to them. This include family, friends, intended, and sometimes even soulmates. The sudden rupture of one mind bound is destabilising for a grown Vulcan; the rupture of all of them could be crippling, even for the most stable adult. In this case, these children did not have the proper emotional training, nor any sort of supportive structure afterwards, to be able to deal with this stress. It is likely that, if they are still alive, they have reverted to a wild, emotional state. Whether that will manifest itself in distress or violence, I cannot say, but it is unlikely that you will encounter stable or logical beings on this planet.”

“During our stay on the planet, we will be constant in contact with a Vulcan mind-healer and an earth’s psychologist specialised in child trauma,” continued Kirk smoothly. “And if for any reason we lose communication, then look to the lieutenant or myself for further instructions.”

He paused, for half of a second, and Uhura knew that he was dying to make some smart ass comment about how they were the only two on board with experience in handling upset Vulcans. But he didn’t, thank god, and went right back to the briefing.

“We’ll figure out how to handle them when we’re on the ground,” was what he finally went with. He stood up. “Now let’s bring those children home.”

 

\--

 

Scotty was quietly arguing with the ensign manning the transporter. It should have been their first indication that something about this mission was about to go terribly, terribly wrong. When Scotty argued, he usually wasn’t _quiet_ about it. 

Kirk strode inside of the transporter room with the full team behind him, then stopped at the look of worry on his chief engineer’s face. He was conferring in hushed whispers with the ensign and fiddling with the commands.

“What’s wrong, Scotty?”

“Captain! I was just about to call you! A violent and sudden storm has just started on the planet’s surface. I can’t beam you to the distress’ call coordinates.”

Kirk swore and started forward to look at the screens.

“The good news sir is that the storm seems to be travelling east, and fast. So I could beam you a bit further west of the dropping point and then you could join up with the call’s coordinates in about an hour on foot.”

“Why not just wait an hour and then drop us there?” asked McCoy. He didn’t seem particularly enthused by the prospect of walking all of the way there in the aftermath of a violent storm, and Uhura agreed with him. She’d read the files on Broguel II. ‘Semi-hostile’ might have been an understatement, and with Vulcan children’s lives on the line, she didn’t want to take any chance.

Scotty wrung his hands. “I’m afraid that won’t work. The storm seems to be leaving behind considerable interference in the air. It doesn’t seem to mess with communications since we can still pick up the distress call but it won’t be safe to beam through. You’ll have to leave the zone before we can pick you up. We could also wait until it’s completely cleared up but…” His eyes flicked to Uhura, who realised that she was unconsciously clutching at the small Vulcan stone at her throat. “I was under the impression that it was an urgent mission.”

Kirk ran a hand through his hair, sighed, and then seemed to take a decision. “All right. I want everyone to pick up camping gear on top of the emergency packs. If this storm does something unpredictable, I want us to be prepared to take cover and wait it out. We’ll beam out in ten.”

Then he called the bridge. “Captain to bridge. Chekov, I want you to keep an eye on this storm and keep us appraised of any developments. Sulu, you have the con.”

“Yes, sir!” they both replied. Kirk cut the communication.

Once they all gathered on the beaming pad, a long shiver crawled its way down Uhura’s spine. She shifted her weight nervously and resisted the urge to fidget with her pendant again. She had a bad feeling about this.

 

\--

 

Nothing immediately out of the ordinary jumped out at them once they appeared on the planet’s surface. They were in a clearing surrounded by a large forest. The threes were tall and broad leaved with a thick undergrowth, and most importantly most of the vegetation was bright blood red. She supposed that in broad daylight the effect might be reminiscent of autumn in certain regions of earth, but with the darkening sky and the thick rainclouds on the horizon, the dark patches of forest looked only sinister. Like someone had poured wine out on a photo of trees and then left it to dry in moldy patches.

Kirk looked down at his padd and then back up. “It’s this way,” he said, pointing at the thickest part of the storm darkening the horizon. Heavy black clouds rolled and growled with the distant noise of thunder. Lighting crossed the sky, and in its sudden white light Uhura could see the rain bisect the sky like a heavy blanket. If she concentrated, she could even hear its deafening noise, even at an hour’s walk of distance. She looked down at her boots, not looking forward to walking through miles of soaked forest at all.

“Once we reach it the storm should have moved away already. If we want to find anyone still alive, let’s not waste any time.”

They set out at a fast trot, the security officers taking flank all around them in a defensive formation. Hendorff took the spot at her right, and they exchanged an uneasy glance. He held himself even more tensely than her, if that was possible. His fingers were clenched around the butt of his phaser, ready to draw it out any moment. Uhura nodded at him and placed her hand on hers. Hendorff was an old friend, even if their first few years at the academy had been fraught. She had never doubted his instincts and had no reason to start now.

Suddenly, the shiver crawled down her spine again and in no time at all, the sky covered in thick rainclouds when previously, there was nothing at all. Rather than having moved miles in the blink of an eye, Uhura had the discomforting and, frankly, terrifying impression that the storm had simply _appeared_ over their heads. All of them stopped suddenly when the sky opened up and let loose tons of frigid water on their head. The visibility was nul, and Uhura felt more than saw the security officers crowd them back in a circle.

They heard their comms crackle, a muffled ‘oh shit – captain!” from Scotty and garbled warnings from Chekov before it dissolved into useless static.

Kirk swore. “Take cover in the trees!” he yelled before they all broke out at a run.

An enormous roar shook up the ground. For a minute, Uhura thought that it was thunder. Then Hendorff yelled and shot behind them, his phaser shot a bright searing light in the near darkness.

She glanced back over her shoulder for a half second, long enough to see the pack of enormous monsters tearing out of the trees from the other side of the clearing. In the light provided by Handorff and the other security officer’s phaser shots, she could see a bit of what they looked like and immediately whished that she hadn’t. They were tiger-like felines, with at least two sets of fangs in their enormous gaping mouths. Their heads were flat, with an elongated shape like a fly trap, and a serie of sharp spikes rose up from their back.

Then she looked behind her again, and they had gained half the terrain between them in less then a minute. She swore and pulled out her own phaser, but then Hendorff was pulling her roughly by the elbow and tugging her through the trees. Under the canopy, with the last of the sky’s light blocked by the trees, it was pitch dark. She stumbled over a root, Hendorff’s hand slipping from her elbow.

Then something slammed into her, a mess of wet fur and enraged fangs. She rolled, grabbing handfuls of fur and trying to push the hell beast’s mouth away from her. She’d lost her phaser in the initial fall, but she had long learned to have another one easy to reach. You didn’t survive Klingons, souped-up super soldiers and weirdly mutated ex-humans with nothing but a single phaser and hope.

Starfleet might have been peacekeepers, but she had learned the hard way that the price of peace was to be ready to defend it.

She kicked the monster, trying to squeeze her knees between their bodies to give herself some space to manoeuver. It was a technique learnt in self-defence class that had been mostly geared towards humanoid attackers, but heck. If it worked.

The beast’s paws scrabbled at her, and for an instant Uhura saw her life flash before her eyes. But luckily this particular specie of eldritch abomination seemed to have evolved without claws, something that she would assuredly take advantage of. She finally managed to pull her second phaser from her belt and slam it hilt-first on the creature’s jaw. Then she fired and kept firing until it dropped its full weight on her and stopped moving.

Uhura stayed still for a few seconds, looking up at the slowly lightening sky through several dense layers of scarlet vegetation. The rain had either stopped, or the leaves were too thick to let it through. Mud slowly seeped through the back of her shirt. She’d lost her pack in the melee. She should probably get up and look for it, but the adrenaline was slowly leaving her system, leaving her temporarily too tired for the prospect of getting up.

Her rib cage was being slowly compressed by the cooling body of the monster she’d just slain. Drips of water finally reached her through the canopy, slashing down her face and around her head. Going by the light, the storm seemed to be lightening up. She suddenly noticed how noisy the wind had been now that it seemed to be quieting down.

She took all of this information in without really processing it.

Then shouts and the sounds of phasers erupted somewhere further in the trees at her left. Her heart jumped a beat. Kirk!

Uhura gathered her strength and managed to pull herself slowly from under the heavy carcass. Her knee knocked something hard on the ground as she crawled away and she had to take a minute to catch her breath. The white hot pain shooting up her leg from hitting exactly the wrong part of her knee suddenly seemed to clear her mind, and as soon as she could move again Uhura grabbed her still smoking phaser and ran in the direction of the screams as fast as she could. She realised that she was heading back towards the clearing seconds before light hit her in the face.

She arrived too late, slipping into a pool of blood and mud on the edge of the trees. Red fabric intertwined with the dead body of a beast caught her eye and Uhura had to close her eyes and will back the nausea threatening to overtake her. Then Kirk yelled again.

He was surrounded by two of those beasts in the center of the clearing, not far from where they’d appeared on the planet. He was holding one of his arms at an awkward angle and his other arm was covered in blood up to the elbow but seemed steady enough as he held his own phaser up at the closest monster. He spotted her and his eyes widened.

“Uhura!” he screamed. “Run!”

Fuck that. She levelled up her own phaser and started shooting at the neared beast. It whirled around and growled at her, but then, unexpectedly, it turned back and jumped at Kirk. He yelped and tried to jump back, but he wasn’t fast enough. The full weight of the beast crushed him backwards on the ground.

She saw, as if in slow motion, its teeth sink into his neck while his hands were scrambling ineffectively on its wet and blood stained fur. The world exploded into white noise.

“NO!”

Uhura ran forward but then the other beast jumped into her path. She raised her phaser desperately, wondering how many shots she had left and not caring one bit, when a whirlwind of light suddenly blinded her.

The monster howled and fell to the ground in pieces, smoke and blood and the stench of burned flesh hitting Uhura in the face before she could even start process what was happening.

Then the lights were moving at fast speed towards the other monster, still bent over her captain, and Uhura realised that it was in fact a person.

A person, wielding two long blades made of pure sunlight and currently slicing in half the murderous monster, faster than it could defend itself. It let out a long, horrible scream, sounding almost human it its pitch of pain, and then it too fell to the ground in two separate pieces.

She remained frozen in place for half of a second, but then her mysterious savior bent over Kirk’s body and lowered their blades to his neck. The odor of burnt skin rose up in the air once more.

“NO!” she screamed again, and this time had enough of her wits about her to shoot at the stranger.

They raised a single blade without even looking up. Her phaser shots ricochet-ed off their laser blade and came right back at her. Uhura yelped as the blast hit her phaser and she had to drop the molten piece of plastic to the ground, cradling her burnt hand close to her chest.

Then the stranger finally did look up and jumped backwards, away from Kirk’s prone body. She didn’t waste a second running up to him, placing herself defensively between the two.

Uhura glared at the stranger for a moment, but they remained there, crouched low on the ground with their light swords up in a strange reverse-grip. They were glaring back but didn’t seem like there were about to attack her again, so she turned her gaze down to her captain.

A large pool of blood was forming around him, but where she expected to see a gaping wound at his neck, there was nothing.

Or rather, his throat was a mess of burns and blackened skin, but it seemed… cauterized, however messily so. His chest was rising, and his breath came through his nose with a worrying whine. Uhura immediately forgot the stranger and dropped on all four, fingers going to Kirk’s pulse at his wrist. It beat as fast as a rabbit’s heart and as faint as a lullaby, but it was there. Kirk was alive. Suddenly light headed with relief, she sat back on her heels.

“They almost ripped out his throat,” came a voice behind her, and Uhura tensed and grabbed Kirk’s phaser, sliding it closer to her knees on the ground but not raising it up yet. The stranger walked to Kirk’s other side, giving her a wide berth, and stayed about five paces away. She still had her laser swords in hands but held them pointed down at the ground, in what was obviously supposed to be a non-threatening manner.

Up close, Uhura could see that the person was an alien of a specie that she had never encountered, of even heard of, before. Their skin was orange, with white markings on their cheeks and forehead. The lines were so neat that it was difficult to decide if these were tattoos or a naturally occurring pattern, like the black lines on Jeylah’s face.

In lieu of hair, they had fleshy tail-like growths surrounding their face, falling on their shoulders at each side and then rising in two points up over their head. When the alien turned her head slightly to quickly glance around the clearing, she could see a third point falling down their back. Those were white with purple stripes, oddly reminiscent of a zebra. A sort of tiara sat at the meeting between this appendage and their forehead, the only piece of jewelry on their person.

They wore off grey military fatigues with riding boots, and underneath Uhura could just about make out the edge of subtle body armor. They looked like a woman, tall and wiry with a fighter’s build, but assumption was the first thing that she had been warned about in xenobiology.

“How to you know English?” she asked, suspicious. It wouldn’t the first time that she’d stumbled into an unknown alien who knew their tongue, and it generally didn’t go well when she did. It was, in fact, usually one of the first warning signs that Uhura’s day was about to get worse.

“My name is Ahsoka Tano,” they answered, nicely side-stepping the question. They looked just as suspicious of her if their narrowed eyes were anything to go by. “Are you Starfleet? Answering to a distress call?”

Uhura tensed and moved her weight backwards, ready to spring out of her crouch to action. Her fingers twitched on the butt of Kirk’s phaser. “Yes, what of it?”

Surprisingly, the stranger relaxed at that, a relieved smile that still contained too many pointed teeth breaking out over their face. They deactivated their laser swords, plunging the clearing into a sudden and oppressive gloom.

“Two Vulcan children taught me English,” they said, before clipping the hilt of their weapons to their belt and gesturing at Kirk. “Let me stabilise him, and I can bring you to them.”

Uhura leant slightly backwards to give Ahsoka some space. They took the hint and came forward to bend down over Kirk. They placed their right hand on his neck and then closed their eyes, apparently concentrating on something. They didn’t seem to be carrying any kind of medical equipment, like a tricorder or anything else of the sort.

A minute passed, and then Kirk seemed, miraculously, to breathe easier. Uhura’s eyebrows hit her hairline. She grabbed his hand and, indeed, his pulse was slightly stronger than it had been before.

Ahsoka pulled back. “I’m sorry,” they said. “I was never really good at healing, but we can move him safely, now. I have real medicine at home. What’s your name?”

Uhura looked up and caught Ahsoka’s eyes. Soft morning light peeked out from behind the clouds, lighting up their features in a diffuse glow that made them seem ethereal and young, a magic knight come to rescue her from this nightmare of a planet. Suddenly, they didn’t seem threatening or otherworldly, but like someone that Uhura could trust.

“Uhura,” she said. “I’m lieutenant Nyota Uhura, of the USS Entreprise.”

Ahsoka’s eyes dropped down to her throat and their eyes widened slightly, their mouth opening on a soft ‘oh’ of surprise. Uhura’s hand shot to her neck, where her hand encountered her Vulcan necklace. The stone was warm under her touch.

Panic slammed into her like a cold bucket of water. “The others. I came with a crew, we need to find them!”

Ahsoka frowned and shook their head. “They’re fine, but they’ve ran in different direction. We need to bring him to a medic first. Then we’ll go find them.” Their eyes flicked to the dead security officer, fast as lightning but slow enough for Uhura to catch it. “We have to leave now before more Krapurs come back.”

Uhura nodded, and together they both grabbed one of Kirk’s arm and managed to support him between them. They shuffled their ways slowly back into the forest.


	3. Broguel II, planet's surface.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahsoka has saved Uhura and Kirk, and she brings them back to the crashed remnants of her ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still unbetaed, and pretty much written for shits and giggles. So probably full of typoes and completely getting both canons wrong. Enjoy!
> 
> 20 feb 2017: minor edits made.

They weren’t going towards the distress signal’s origin. In fact, they were going in exactly the opposite direction. Still, Uhura figured, Ahsoka had saved them. They probably weren’t leading them into a trap. In fact, now that the laser swords were sheathed, they didn’t seem to be a bad sort.

She spared a glance at Kirk, still passed out between them. His face was shock white and his cheeks hollow, but under her arm she could still feel him breathe. His grey mission suit was covered in thick patches of blackening blood, the yellow stripes of command only faintly visible at his shoulders now. Uhura had the fleeting thought that Kirk would surely get a blast out of the laser swords, when he woke up. She would have to ask Ahsoka to show them to him.

As if sensing the direction that her mind had taken, the alien spoke up. “So what’s his name?” they asked, with a nod in Kirk’s direction.

“Kirk,” she said. “Captain James T. Kirk.”

“Captain,” mused Ahsoka. “And that is where, in Starfleet’s chain of command?”

She hesitated for all of half a second. Perhaps it would be a bad idea, to divulge how important Kirk was, but then again, _Ahsoka had saved them._ That had to mean something. She would not let what had happened with Khan and Krall and everything else turn her paranoid.

“It’s the highest rank that there is on board of our ship,” she finally, answered, pursing her lips. She hoped that she hadn’t just placed them both in trouble.

Ahsoka gave her a startled look. “And you said that you were a lieutenant? How close to captain is that?”

It was Uhura’s turn to be surprised. “It’s three ranks under. There are ensigns, and lieutenants, and then lieutenant-commanders, a commander, and then finally the captain of the ship.”

“Huh,” mumbled Ahsoka. “That’s simple.”

Uhura looked at them and Ahsoka bit their lips. Finally, as if it cost them a lot to say it, they explained: “Where I come from, there are what seems like a million more ranks. It gets confusing.”

Paired with the laser swords, and with the padding of armor under their suit, Uhura was starting to get somewhat of a clear image of who and what Ahsoka might be. “Are you a soldier, then?” she asked, but Ahsoka shook their head.

“Not anymore. It doesn’t matter.”

And then they refused to say anything more. The air around them seemed suddenly changed, charged with some unknown tension. She felt uncomfortable probing more at what was clearly a touchy subject, so she lapsed into silence.

A soldier, she thought. A soldier who might have crashed on this planet too, if they had known the Vulcans long enough to pick up English from them. Either that, or their specie had a base of operation here, perhaps a village or a town. There had been nothing about this in Starfleet’s datasheet, and signs of life on the planet had registered as minimal on their scanners. She would bet on crashed and stranded, then. But from where did Ahsoka origin, if that was the case? There was no sign of any space faring sentient specie anywhere near this sector of space. They were much too close to the Klingon’s neutral zone for any independent specie to survive alone very long, after all.

They soon reached the edge of the woods. The ground gave way to the edge of a cliff, plunging downwards sharply, and the remnants of a crashed ship was occupying the bottom of the valley. It was a model of ship that Uhura had never seen before, and she assumed it to be the one that Ahsoka had arrived on. Her questions answered themselves. Clearly, they were as trapped on this planet as the Vulcans and now Uhura herself was.

The ship in question, or what remained of it, looked nothing like a transport ship, and even less like one made for exploration. It was shaped like a hexagon, painted grey and yellow, and it actually looked more like one of those post-modern german concrete houses than a ship. It also seemed to be slightly upside down. But it was definitely a deep space travel ship, and once more, Uhura wondered at the civilisation that had produced it. It looked advanced, maybe even more than what the Federation could produce, if slightly uglier than the smooth lines and rounded curves of their own spaceships. Ahsoka glanced at her and then back at the ship.

“It’s one of those early VCX,” she said, as if that explained anything, “before they fixed all of the bugs. Corellian. It flies, or at least it used to. That’s all you can say for it.”

They pulled Kirk’s arm higher over their shoulder and started down a side path which Uhura hadn’t seen at first glace. It took them down all the way on the side of the cliff to its base. Then they started in a straight line through the tall grass towards the ship. Ahsoka stopped midway, dragging Kirk and Uhura at a standstill with them.

“It’s me!” they said, loud and clear even though Uhura couldn’t see anyone or anything aside from the dirt path and the crashed ship two hundred paces in front of them. Then they said another thing in a language which she’d never heard of, but which definitely had the word Starfleet in it.

Something creaked, long and low, and the doors of the ship opened. As suspected, the ramp was upside down, and so it rose up in the air rather than lowering to the ground. Three faces peeked out from the opening, and Uhura’s heart skipped a beat.

The first person to jump out of the ship was a middle aged man, with blonde hair that was cropped short, and wearing a smooth white armor that looked a bit like plastic. It was clean but covered in scratches of varying sizes, and blue stripes of paint were peeling off everywhere.

What surprised Uhura was that he looked human, even though he spoke the other language with the same ease that Ahsoka did.

But what really took her aback was when the two Vulcan teenagers emerged. The youngest one ran towards them while the other stayed behind with the man, both taking their times to slowly and visibly stow weapons into their belt. It was a message, and clear as day, but it was one that Uhura ultimately took comfort in. Here, no more monsters would attack them and try to eat her captain.

Remembering the parameters of her mission, she looked over the two Vulcans quickly and, she hoped, subtly, and she was surprised at what she saw. There was nothing of the wildly emotional children that Spock has expected her to find; indeed, the youngest bowed politely to them as he came closer and then exchanged a rapid series of words with Ahsoka, his stance and tone every inch that of a proper logical Vulcan. He was frowning as he took in Kirk. He placed his hand first on his neck, then on his forehead, and finally looked backwards at his brother and snapped something urgently. The older Vulcan disappeared back into the ship.

Then he took Ahsoka’s place under his arm and helped Uhura move him closer to the crashed ship.

Ahsoka went on ahead of them, and when they reached the side of the hull, they placed a hand on an access panel that Uhura hadn’t previously noticed. With a whirr and a whine, a part of the wall smoothly slid apart to reveal an hidden door. It looked like one of those access traps that old ships sometimes had, closer to the hatch of a submarine than to a spaceship entrance.

“Welcome to the Memento, Lieutenant Uhura,” announced Ahsoka, before ducking and entering the small corridor beyond.

They moved Kirk inside with some difficulty, for the passage was barely large enough for one person, let along two of them trying to drag inside an unconscious man. She tried to avoid stepping on the cracked light panels that were flickering  faintly on the ground.

“This way,” said the Vulcan, which she assumed was Susak, quietly. He turned left into a large corridor, and then Ahsoka was opening a door ahead of them. The sight of a medical bay welcomed her at last.

They moved Kirk inside and laid him on a cot tucked in a corner. Uhura glanced quickly around as Susak bent over him and started unpacking what looked like foreign medical tools from a set of drawers. It looked like a medical bay, certainly, but one straight out of some twentieth century science fiction movie. There were long metal tables with lamps and screens, which was normal enough, but also a large cylinder tank in a corner, the sort where she might expect to see people floating in some bubbly blue liquid while a mad scientist crackled in the corner. Not to mention that everything looked like it had been pulled from the floor hurriedly and wielded to the ceiling when the ship had gone upside down.

A high-pitched whistle sounded suddenly behind her, and Uhura startled when some sort of metal bin on wheels wheezed past her to bump up into Susak’s legs. It kept whining and whistling until he acknowledged it, putting his hand flat on its dome and giving it instructions. With a start, Uhura realised that it was a robot, and that the robot in question was advanced enough to understand instructions and help Susak perform medical care. Tiny pincers came out of its rounded body, offering tools and objects to the Vulcan as he worked.

Sensing that she was useless here but unwilling to leave, she backed up into a corner and watched them work in silence for a moment. They applied a strange sort of blue ooze to Kirk’s neck, the stench of it overpowering the room for a moment and making her gag.

Ahsoka came over and put a hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be fine now. Susak has read every single medical text that I had in my datapad the moment that I taught him the language, and N3P2 is what you get when you mix an astromech with a medical droid – apparently the previous owner of this ship didn’t believe in owning two different droids for two different tasks.”

The droid in question whirled around at that moment and then smacked right into the edge of a table, its’ loud beeping voice raised in apparent confusion for a bit. Ahsoka winced. “Not the kind of mix that I would have made, but well. Peetoo is one of a kind. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the others.”

Uhura hesitated, but Kirk seemed to be already breathing easier under the several layers of mysterious blue goo. She followed Ahsoka into the bowels of the ship.

They emerged into a sort of mess room, about as big as one of the smallest conference rooms on board the Enterprise. Already inside was the blonde man and Syrik, both of them trying to give the impression that they weren’t on edge. The man was leaning on the wall, a hand casually resting near his phaser belt, and Syrik was standing ramrod straight in the middle of the rooms, hands crossed behind his back, in the very Vulcan equivalent of pacing. They both would have seemed casual enough had she not known better.

“ _T'kahr!_ ” blurted out Syrik, the moment that Ahsoka entered the room. “ _What happened out there?_ ”

“Syrik,” said Ahsoka with a calm nod, answering his Vulcan with english, “Rex. Let me introduce you to Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, from the Federation. She and captain Kirk are here to rescue us, but they were attacked by Krapurs before they could get to our signal.”

The man named Rex looked troubled. “The winter came too fast this year,” he said, with a slight accent. “It would have been better for you if you’d not come at all, no offense.”

Uhura reared back. “What do you mean?”

“That’s my fault, really,” sighed Ahsoka. “The winters on this planet are too harsh, with too many storms. Every year we turn off the distress call before the bad season and when start it again three months later, because the last thing that we want is for people to come here and try to help but then become stuck too. But this year we were all taken by surprise by it. The storms shouldn’t have started for another two weeks at least. Can you still contact your ship?”

She pulled out her comm, but like before, got nothing but static out of it. She tried every channel, and then scanned for the signal of the other members of the away team.

“I can’t reach the Enterprise, but I am still getting signal from the others on the planet,” she finally said. “They’re faint, but they’re there.”

“Then we should leave to go get them right away,” Ahsoka said. “Otherwise you’ll soon lose their signal altogether. There’s no way to tell if this storm will be a short one or if it’s really the beginning of winter, but either way we should not take any chance.”

“I will go with you,” said Syrik, but Ahsoka shook their head.

“No. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone. I need you here to protect your brother and the ship.”

A small furrow appeared between his eyebrows, and he looked like he might argue, but then Ahsoka stepped forward and unclasped one of their laser swords from her belt. They held it out to him, and his eyes widened slightly.

“Take this,” they said. “Use it if you need to.”

He made no move to take the sword, even going so far as to lean back slightly. “ _I can’t. This weapon is your life._ ”

Ahsoka smiled. “ _No it’s not. And I always meant for you to have it._ ”

Syrak finally seemed to get over his hesitation, and extended a hand to take the offered weapon in a firm grip. Then he stepped back and bowed low, in a very formal way.

“ _Thank you, teacher. I will not disappoint you_.”

Only once did he straighten back up did Uhura notice the long thin braid that hung next to his ear, previously hidden behind his shoulder. It seemed out of place next to the rest of his traditional Vulcan bowl cut, but it was tied with tiny colored beads which seemed too deliberate to not be meaningful.

Once the solemnity of the moment had passed, Rex shifted from his spot leaning on the wall. He walked up to Uhura. His gait was odd, not quite limping but indicating of a stiff leg. He stopped next to her, but when he talked he was looking at Ahsoka. “Where will you want me, then?”

Ahsoka turned a considering look on him. “Stay here,” they finally decided. “I have a feeling that you will need more firepower than we do.”

Syrak’s mouth twisted at that, something worried entering his expression, but Rex seemed to take it in stride. “Yes, sir.” Then he nodded at Uhura. “You’ll need a weapon.”

“I have one,” she said, raising Kirk’s phaser.

Rex snorted. “You’ll need a real weapon. Come with me.”

He lead her out of a door, and then to a small panel hidden in the wall of a corridor. “No offense to your blaster, I’m sure it’s a good service weapon, but you’ve seen what’s out there.”

While talking, he opened up the hidden panel, revealing a weapon rack equipped with several phaser pistols and a few rifles. He picked one and held it out to her. “Tell me how that feels.”

She grabbed the heavy weapon and hefted it up on her shoulder, aiming at the wall. She wasn’t a specialist, not by a long shot, but she had gone through basic training same as everyone else. It seemed balanced and fine. Then she lowered her aim and really looked at it. The trigger was where it was supposed to be, and she fingered what looked like the safety, flicking it on and off under Rex’s approving gaze.

“Where’s the stun option?” she finally asked. “Does it have one?”

“There are special bolts for it,” he said. “I’m afraid we don’t have any with us right now, and besides they wouldn’t be of much use to you against this planet’s critters.”

Then he proceeded to show her the energy pack, and how to reload it. Finally, he seemed to hesitate.

“Listen, take care out there, alright? The commander can handle herself, and I’m sure that you can too, but just to be sure. Once the storm hits, you won’t be able to communicate with anyone, it’ll frazzle your comms right up. Just be sure you’ve hit a safe point before that happens. This damned planet has taken too many people already.”

She looked at him, unsure whether she should ask. She thought of the security officer dead in the clearing, whose identify she had not even been able to confirm. Then she thought of the three humans who had been on the ship with Susak and Syrik, whom where nowhere to be found.

In the end, she settled for nodding grimly.


	4. USS Entreprise, in orbit over Broguel II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On board the Entreprise, the crew is doing everything that they can to bring their friends back alive and well. Meanwhile, on the planet's surface, Uhura and Ahsoka are searching for the rest of the landing party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys so I just edited all previous parts of this story. Nothing super huge was changed, in the sense that I didn't add any scenes or anything, but the syntax is way better and I added descriptions and extra sentences and whatnot. Sorry for the long way, and I hope that you'll like this chapter!

“Please, give me good news,” said Sulu wearily when he entered the conference room. “Have we managed to make contact yet?”

Scotty made a face and shook his head. Sulu bi back a curse. He was starting to think that he was cursed. Every time that he sat on that goddamned captain’s chair, a crisis ended up happening. Or maybe it was just that every time that Kirk left the ship, he ended up in trouble. Maybe he was the one cursed.

“We’ve tried everything,” said the chief engineer, “but nothing can pierce those atmospheric disturbances. We can’t get a fix on their position, let along talk to them.”

His brow rose. “We don’t know where they are?”

“No. We’ve even tried Mister Spock’s method of tracking Lieutenant Uhura’s necklace, but for some reason we get three results instead of one!”

“Wait, I thought that this radiation was specific to that one vulcan stone,” frowned Jeyla. “How can we get three results?”

Scotty shrugged. “I dunno, lass. But it doesn’t seem like an instrument failure.”

A massive headache was starting to form behind Sulu’s temples. He leant an elbow on the table and rubbed his forehead. “Speaking of Commander Spock, how is he reacting to the situation?”

“Badly enough that I had to sedate him,” grumbled nurse Chapel ominously, channeling McCoy enough that Chekov scooted his chair a few inches away. “He kept trying to sneak off to the bridge. He got stabbed three times in the chest and had two major organ replacements just last week, and he wants to go running around anyway! Not on my watch.”

Right. So the commander was out of the equation for several days at least, and the captain was missing. Probably, knowing him, injured and in untold danger too. Sulu looked down at his padd. He had more bad news, and he wasn’t sure how to break it to the crew. He looked at Chekov.

“What are your estimates regarding this storm, Chekov? When do you think we’ll be able to send down a rescue team?”

His friend bit his lips. “I don’t know,” he said, and it seemed like it costs him a lot to admit it. Chekov was trying his damned best to shoot up the ranks and become captain even younger than Kirk, and as such he was extremely hard on himself for every imagined weakness. “This storm is already unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and we don’t know enough about this planet to effectively predict its behavior. We thought we could but… we were wrong.”

“Are you saying that we’ll have to wait and see?” asked Scotty, dismayed. “While they’re all in danger down there? Don’t we have any other plan?”

“Mister Scott is right, I’m not sure we have the time to wait and see,” said Sulu. Better to rip off the bandaid now. “Starfleet contacted us just after the team went down on planet. They report suspicious Klingon activity in the region. They understand our current predicament, but they’ve warned us that we were on standby and could get called away at any time.”

Chapel cursed out loud. “Dammit! Starfleet can’t just order us to leave our own people down there!”

“Actually, they can,” piped up Chekov with a tiny frown. “But that doesn’t mean we have to listen.”

“Well –“ started Scotty, and Sulu considered hitting his head on the table. Was the crew seriously considering committing mutiny, _now_? Where was Spock to glower logically at people when you needed him?

“I’ve contacted the team that conducted the original survey of the planet,” said ensign Ohnaka suddenly. The shy girl that was currently replacing Uhura at her console blushed at the sudden attention of everyone but forged through. “I asked them for any pertinent information about the planet’s weather that didn’t make it through to the official report. I’m waiting to hear back from them.”

“Thank you, ensign,” said Sulu, glad that her intervention seemed to have cut through the crew’s seditious feelings, for now. “We will keep trying to find a solution for as long as we can. Mister Chekov, send the probe’s readings to Commander Spock’s padd. He can analyse the data from his bed. Mister Scott, keep an eye on the ion levels. The minute we can send more people down there, I want to know. Ensign Ohnaka, I want to know as soon as the storm clears up enough to receive their comm signal. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.” they all chorused back.

Sulu watched the officers file out of the room and sighed. By all gods, he hoped that his friends were okay. Spock would be crushed if they weren’t, and he wasn’t ready to be a first officer yet.

 

\--

 

“What were your friend’s names again?”

Uhura’s fingers stilled, then returned to playing with the crystal around her neck. “There’s Leonard McCoy, who’s the chief medical engineer of our ship. Then there is Gregory Hendorff, his younger sibling Bruno Hendorff,  Hamid Nuh, and Kamon Park all of them security officers but…” her lips thinned and she squeezed the necklace in her fist. “One of them got killed in that clearing and I don’t know which one.”

Ahsoka put down the stick that she was using to stroke the fire and walked closer to her. They’d been forced to stop for the night, sheltered between the roots of a tall tree. Two days had passed already without any sign of Uhura’s crewmates, and she knew that the woman must have been worrying sick. If Ahsoka hadn’t had the Force urging her forward, she too would have been getting restless. She sat gently on the ground. All around them, nocturnal animals were starting to stir. Night on this planet was actually the safest time to be outside, for most of the large predators were only active during the day. Still, with large storm clouds blocking the light of the planet’s tiny moon, the two woman had soon had to admit that they could not continue their search in pitch darkness.

Ahsoka gently placed a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find them,” she said, a little lamely.

She could feel Uhura’s tension, but only once she had touched her did she feel the tiny tremors that shook her body. She inched closer. The night was warm, despite the rain and wind that had torn through the jungle earlier. Still, Uhura shivered.  
“I haven’t seen any trace of them, and my communicator is still broken. How are you sure that we’re heading in the right direction?”

“I know it through the Force.”

Uhura turned her head to look at her. Her soft hair slid from her shoulder over Ahsoka’s fingers, and she hastily snatched her hand back. She frowned. “The Force? What is that?”

Ahsoka shrugged. That part was hard. The Force and all of it’s intricacies was a hard concept to explain, even to people from her own galaxy who knew what Jedi were. In this galaxy, people tended not to believe in ‘magic’, as Syrik had once told her.  

“The Force is an energy field, _created_ by all living things and _creating_ all living things at once. Some people where I come from can feel it. From there, we learn to use it to do certain things. It’s not a science, though. Not the way that you understand science. Since it can be learned and perfected, I’d say that using the Force is more like an art? Or a religion. I mean, it definitely stems from belief.”

Uhura was frowning, evidently not understanding a word of her rambling. Ahsoka cast about for something concrete to show her.

“Here,” she said. “Watch this.” She extended her hand towards the stick that she’d left close to the fire, and concentrated. Slowly, the stick rose in the air, and then it shot forward and slammed into her waiting hand. Uhura startled.

“How did you do that!?”

She grinned. “I used the Force. It can be used for a lot of things! Physical things like moving objects and running faster, as well as mental things like premonitions and, uh…” she was about to say ‘making people do what you want,’ an old favorite trick of master Kenobi, but she held her tongue at the last minute. Susak and Syrik, when they had learned about the Jedi mind trick, had been… less than pleased. And had made Ahsoka swear to never use it again, even though it’d hardly been in her habits to begin with.  “Sensing people,” she finished lamely.

Uhura leant forward. “You can sense my friends? Are you telepathic?”

Of course, if Uhura had met Vulcans before, then she would latch on to that. Ahsoka figured that out of all her poor explanation, it must have been the part that made the more sense. “Not in the same way than Vulcans are,” she said. “The Force allows me to sense people’s intentions, sometimes, if they project hard enough or if they’re unshielded. But I can’t really ‘talk’ to people in my mind unless I have a bound with them. And I can’t really feel your friends over that much of a distance, I’m sorry.”

Uhura’s face fell. Ahsoka hastened to add: “But the Force tells me that we should go this way, and it doesn’t feel dark, so I’m sure that they’re all right!”

She did get a sense of urgency from the Force, one that made her heart beat like a drum, but they were already being as fast at they could. There was no point in worrying Uhura over it.

“The Force tells you that?”

She nodded. “Yes. And I know to trust in the Force. It’s what led me to you and Kirk in the first place, after all. Although, your crystal was a factor, too.”

Her eyes went wide and she looked down at the necklace that she was still clutching in her hand. “Really? Why?”

Ahsoka crossed her legs and rested an elbow on her knee. Rather than answering the question, she asked one of her own. “Can you tell me where you got it?”

The human’s fist closed around the crystal again, completely obscuring it from view. Then she shoved it down her shirt. Ahsoka tried not to take it personally.

“It was given to me. It’s… It belonged to the mother of a dear friend of mine. Why do you say it brought you to us? Can you ‘feel’ it too?”

Ahsoka smiled and stroke the hilts of her lightsabers absently. “It’s a kyber crystal. To those who know how to listen, it sings.”

Surprise coloured the other woman’s features. “You’ve seen one of those before?”

“Of course. They grow in several places where I come from. They hold a special meaning for Jedi, because it’s what powers our lightsabers.”

She unhooked one of the blades from her belt, and held it out in the palm of her hand. Then, closing her eyes, she levitated the hilt and let the components drift apart, using the Force to uncover the small, white crystal that resided at it’s core. Uhura let out a soft gasp.

“They grew on Vulcan,” she murmured. “We thought that they were unique to the planet.”

Ahsoka reassembled her lightsaber carefully before speaking. “I’m not surprised. Vulcan seemed like the sort of place that the Force would bless this way.” She turned the lightsaber in her hands idly. “The very first test of skill of a Jedi is – _was_ traditionally to gather their first crystal to make their own lightsaber. I myself accompanied a few groups of initiates to Illum for the task. It was always an honor.”

She swallowed, the grief still thick at the back of her throat despite all these years. “A kyber crystal can’t be found unless it calls to you. Only when the person it’s destined for is near does it reveal itself. Otherwise it looks just like any other shard of ice in a frozen cave. Whoever gathered the crystal that went into your necklace, they were Force sensitive. They must have heard it’s call.”

“It emits a faint radioactive signature,” said Uhura fondly. “With the right instrument, it can be tracked down even amidst considerable turbulence. It was used once to save my life, you know.”

Ahsoka smiled. She didn’t know that any instrument could track kyber, and she hoped that the Empire would never find out. Still, if it’d saved Uhura’s life, then she was grateful. “Then the Force was with you.”

A smile curled up at the corner of her friend’s mouth. “I like that.”


End file.
